Natalia Roman Morte |
Djerba (EFE).- The island of Djerba attracts thousands of pilgrims every year who visit the thousand-year-old Ghriba synagogue but also numerous descendants of the diaspora in search of a Tunisian Jewish identity, to complete a part, often unknown, of your family history.
For the first time, Daphné Bem Baren plunges into this temple – the oldest in North Africa at 2,600 years old – accompanied by several friends to participate in each of the traditions that surround this mysterious saint who, according to legend, She was revered by Jews and Muslims for her miracles.
Armed with a dozen hard-boiled eggs, Daphné writes on each of them the names of her family and friends to make her wish – a pregnancy, a wedding, better health – before placing them in a small cave and abandoning herself to faith. Her prayers in Hebrew are mixed with Tunisian dialect and French as well as bukha (date liquor), mysticism and folklore.
Four years ago, this woman in her forties decided to change Paris for La Marsa, a small coastal town on the outskirts of the capital where her grandparents were from. The fact that her parents chose Tunisia as the destination for her retirement gave her the last push to make “the best decision of her life”.
“I spent every summer of my childhood here so it was like coming home. A feeling of attachment that has been created over the years and made it vital to return at a given moment. It is like closing the circle, giving back to my grandparents a part of what they transmitted to me ”, she affirms excitedly, she is employed in a graphics company.
A few years ago, Daphné felt the need to convert to Judaism despite the fact that religion was a proscribed matter in her family after her grandfather, a Jewish Italian-Tunisian communist, was deported by colonial France (1881-1956) and taken prisoner. in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II.
“Since then my grandfather completely rejected Judaism, passing it on to my father, who was not even circumcised. When I converted, I felt that he was reconnecting with that abandoned part of my identity and this made my father end up reconciling with Judaism, ”she says proudly.
Identity reconciliation
This “reconciliation” between a double Arab-Jewish identity is what moved Cléo Cohen to come to Tunisia four years ago despite her grandmother’s warnings: “there is nothing left there, they burned everything”.
More than half a century after the exile of her Tunisian and Algerian Sephardic grandparents to France, this filmmaker recently in her thirties tries to restore the forgotten memory of a third generation who, like her, did not have the opportunity to discover the country, beyond the nostalgia and ghosts of the past.
Colonialism, Arab nationalism, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or the exodus are not just geopolitical concepts but pieces of a puzzle that Cléo seeks to put together in her documentary “May God protect you” through her personal story.
Now a new generation returns to Tunisia to follow in the footsteps of their parents and grandparents and discover the scenes of those anecdotes heard so many times. “There are more and more young people who decide to return and the fact of creating ties between us and sharing our experiences encourages them,” explains Cléo, who is attending this pilgrimage for the second time.
If the Jewish community had 100,000 members in the 1940s, today barely a thousand remain, mainly in this small enclave in the south of the country, after most emigrated to France and Israel. However, the Ghriba continues to be the link between those who refuse to leave their native Tunisia and those who dream of returning next year to renew their wishes.